NATIONAL COLUMNS

Of all the losers in this season of discontent, the mainstream media top the list. I don't say this lightly, and I sincerely fear that loss of faith in journalism ultimately will cause more harm to the nation than any outside enemy could hope to.

There were plenty of agitated and even hysterical reactions to Donald Trump's election victory, but none more surprising than the one expressed in a direct mail letter I got a couple of days afterward.

Speaking in Greece on his valedictory trip to Europe as president, Barack Obama struck a familiar theme: "(W)e are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude form of nationalism, or ethnic identity, or tribalism that is built around an 'us' and a 'them' ...

What follows here is remarkably similar to what I had planned to write after an expected and prayed-for Hillary Clinton victory: Obsessive appeals to racial, ethnic, sexual and gender identity groupings are bad politics.

Wednesday brought a blue tragic morning, and 59 million people share my sorrow. We the women are shell-shocked and gobsmacked. Hillary Clinton even won the popular vote -- salt in the cut. If a bright shining leader of her generation came so close to being the first female president, only to lose, what woman will win the White House in our lifetime?